Restructuring laid the path for M&As, cloud offerings: Cognizant CEO

Cognizant’s Chief Executive Officer Brian Humphries says the restructuring done last year has helped the company lay the path for M&As and a better standing in the cloud technology market, despite a difficult business climate this year due to Covid-19. Edited excerpts of an interview with ET.

How have last year’s restructuring initiatives helped this year, given the outlook of a tough economic climate?
We had done a tremendous amount of work last year, which has given us somewhat of a six-pack as we go into 2020. We are bearing the fruits now. We determined our strategy around data and analytics, cloud, digital engineering and IoT and because we have refined the strategy, we have been able to execute an M&A roadmap against that strategy. That’s one of the reasons we have so much momentum in the cloud. On top of that, we have made decisions last year to differentiate between cost versus an investment and as a consequence of that you see progress in Q1 in terms of best quarterly booking since 2017.